Arithmetic
Axiom
Principles
Absolute Truth
Mathematics
Mathematical
Truth
Understanding
Judgment
Human Insight
Meaning
Marks
Useful
Free
Misunderstanding
Irrational
Degree of Truth
Mental Operations
Matrix
Code
Reiteration
Meaning
Mergers
Synergy
Contracts
1+1+1+1
1+1=2
2+2=3
2+2=4
2+2=5
2+3=5
2x2=4
2x2=7 |
The
Metaphysics.
"
. . . [H]owever much things may be 'so and not so,' yet differences
of degree are inherent in the nature of things. For we
should not say that 2 and 3 are equally even; nor are he who thinks
that 4 is 5, and he who thinks it is 1000, equally wrong: hence if
they are not equally wrong, the one is clearly less wrong, and so
more right."1a
|
Meditations.
" . . . [W]ether I am awake or sleeping, two and three
added together always make five, and a square never has more
than four sides; and it does not seem possible that truths so
apparent can be suspected of any falsity or uncertainty."1a
|
Pensées.
"Even fewer people study man than mathematics."1a
|
Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues.
"
. . .
[W]hen words are used without a meaning,
you may put them together as you please, without danger of running
into a contradiction. You may say, for example, that twice
two is equal to seven, so long as you declare you
do not take the words of that proposition in their usual
acceptation, but for marks of you know
not what."1a
|
Philosophical
Dictionary.
"Necessary. 'Beware of
all the inventions of charlatans . . . and believe that two
and two make four."1a
|
The Principles
of Psychology (Volume 2).
"The same
objects, compared in the same way, always give the same results
. . .
This last principle, which we may call the axiom of constant
result, holds good throughout all our mental operations
. . ."2d*
"This PRINCIPLE
OF MEDIATE COMPARISON might be briefly . . . expressed by the
formula "more than the more is more
than the less� . . .
. . . This AXIOM OF SKIPPED INTERMEDIARIES or of
TRANSFERRED RELATIONS occurs . . . in logic as the
fundamental principle of inference . . . It seems to be on
the whole the broadest and deepest law of man's thought."2e*
"How could our
notion that one and one are eternally and necessarily
two ever maintain itself in a world where every time we add
one drop of water to another we get not two but one again? . .
. At most we could then say that one and one are usually
two."2f*
|
The Life of Reason.
IV REASON IN
SCIENCE
"The great glory of mathematics,
like that of virtue, is to be useful while remaining
free."2a
"Is four really twice two? The
answer is not that most people say so, but that, in saying so,
I am not misunderstanding myself."2b
"The darkest spots are in man himself,
in his fitful, irrational disposition."2c |
Bertrand
Russell on
God and Religion.
"I am persuaded that there is absolutely
no limit to the absurdities that can, by government action,
come to be generally believed. Give me an adequate army . .
. and I will undertake . . . to make the majority of the
population believe that two and two are three . . . "1a
|
The
Open Society and Its Enemies.
"The fact
that a statement is true may sometimes help to explain why it
appears to us as self-evident. This is the case with '2+2=4' .
. . But the opposite is clearly not the case. The fact that
a sentence appears to some or even to all of us to be 'self-evident' . . . is
no reason why it should be true."1a
|
Nineteen
Eighty-Four.
"BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU."1a
"FREEDOM IS SLAVERY."1b
"TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE."1c*
|
Technology
Management and Society.
"The kindergarten stage is over. We�re
past the time when everybody was terribly impressed by the
computer�s ability to do two plus two in fractions of a
nanosecond."1a
|
Simulacra
and Simulation.
"Clones.
Cloning. . .
The Father and the Mother have disappeared, not in the service of
an aleatory liberty of the subject, but in the service of a
matrix called code. No more mother, no more father:
a matrix. And it is the matrix, that of the genetic
code, that now infinitely 'gives birth' based on a functional mode
purged of all aleatory sexuality."1a
"
. . . [C]loning
enshrines the reiteration of the same: 1+1+1+1, etc. . . .
This is how one puts an end to totality. If all information can be
found in each of its parts, the whole loses its meaning. . ."1b
"What
is lost is the original . . ."1c
|
Shadows
of the Mind.
"Understanding is, after all, what
science is all about -- and science is a great deal more than
mere mindless computation."1a
"Gödel's
argument does not argue in favour of there being inaccessible
mathematical truths. What it does argue for, on the other
hand, is that human insight lies beyond formal argument
and beyond computable procedures. Moreover, it argues
powerfully for the very existence of the Platonic mathematical
world. Mathematical truth is not determined arbitrarily
by the rules of some 'man-made' formal system, but has an absolute
nature, and lies beyond any such system of specifiable
rules."1b*
|
The Ralph
Nader Reader.
"Conglomerate
mergers are usually justified by the magic of synergy, that
2+2=5. To be sure, economies of scale require that firms be
large enough to be efficient. But firms can also be too
large to be efficient (or 2+2=3)."1e*
"With
99 percent of all contracts not negotiated -- e.g.,
insurance policies, credit card conditions, mortgage instruments,
shrink-wrap licenses, and installment loan agreements -- sellers
demand that consumers sign on the dotted line and give up rights,
remedies, and bargaining."1g |
|
*
Italics in the original.
|
1
Aristotle.
The
Metaphysics.
Books I-IX. Translation by Hugh Tredennick. G.P. Goold, ed.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933, 1989. (The Loeb
Classical Library.)
a
Book IV, at 181.
|
1 René
Descartes (1596-1650). Discourse on
Method and the Meditations (1637). Translated with an
Introduction by F.E. Sutcliffe. F.E. Sutcliffe, 1968. London, UK:
Penguin Books Ltd.
a First Meditation: About the Things We May Doubt, at 98.
|
1 Blaise Pascal
(1623-1662). Pensées (1670).
Translated with an Introduction by A.J. Krailsheimer. A.J.
Krailsheimer, 1966, 1995. London, UK: Penguin Books Ltd.
a Human Nature, Style, Jesuits, etc., at 217.
|
1
George Berkeley (1685-1753).
Principles of Human Knowledge
and Three Dialogues. Edited with an
Introduction and Notes by Howard Robinson. Text, A. A. Luce and T.
E. Jessop (The Complete Works of George Berkeley, 1948-57,
Nelson). Editorial matter, Howard Robinson, 1996. Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press, Inc., 1999.
Part I:
The Main Text
a
Seventeen objections to his theory and the answers to them,
at 58. |
1 Voltaire (1694-1778). Philosophical
Dictionary (1764). Edited and translated by Theodore
Besterman, 1972. London,
England: Penguin Books Ltd.
a Nécessaire: Necessary, at 325.
|
1 Bertrand Russell.
Bertrand Russell on
God and Religion.
Edited by Al
Sekel.
a An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish, at 225.
|
1
The Life
of Reason.
Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998. [Originally published in 5
v.: The Life of Reason, or, The Phases of Human Progress. New
York: C. Scribners' Sons, 1905-6.]
IV REASON IN SCIENCE
a
Chapter 6: Dialectic, at
438.
b
Chapter 7: Pre-Rational
Morality, at 444.
c
Chapter 10: The Validity of Science,
at 490.
|
1 Bertrand Russell.
Bertrand Russell on
God and Religion.
Edited by Al
Sekel.
a An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish, at 225.
|
1 Karl
R. Popper.
The Open Society and Its Enemies.
Volume II: The High Tide
of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx, and the Aftermath. Fifth ed. (revised). Karl
Raimund Popper, 1962, 1966. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
a Chapter 11: The Aristotelian Roots of
Hegelianism, Note 42, at 291.
|
1 George Orwell (1903-1950). Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Eric Blair, 1949. Estate of the late Sonia Brownwell Orwell, 1987.
Note on the Text by Peter Davison, 1989.London, UK: Penguin Group,
1989, 1990. (First published by Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd.,
1949.)
a Big
Brother, at 3.
b Slogans
of the Party, at 18.
c "2+2=5,"
at 290 and 303.
|
1
Peter F. Drucker (b. 1909).
Technology
Management and Society: Essays. Peter F. Drucker,
1958, 1959, 1961, 1966, 1967, 1969, 1970. New York, NY: Harper &
Row, Publishers, Inc., 1977.a
Ch. 10: The Manager and
the Moron, at 173. First published in The McKinsey Quarterly,
Spring 1967.
|
1 Jean Baudrillard.
Simulacra and Simulation.
Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor, MI: The University
of Michigan Press, 1994. Originally published in French by
Éditions Galilée, 1981.
a Clone
Story, at 96-97.
b Ibid.,
at 97.
c
Ibid.,
at 99. |
1 Roger
Penrose. Shadows of the Mind: A Search
for the Missing Science of Consciousness. Roger
Penrose, 1994. London, UK: Vintage, Random House UK Limited, 1995.
First published by Oxford University Press, 1994.
a Preface, at vii.
b What New Physics We Need to Understand the Mind:
Implications?, at 418.
|
1
Ralph Nader.
The Ralph Nader Reader.
Foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich. Ralph Nader, 2000. New York, NY:
Seven Stories Press.
On the Corporate State and the
Corporatizing of America
e Is
Bigness Bad for Business? Co-Authored by Mark Green (1979), at
106.
On the Information Age
g
Digital
Democracy in Action (1996), at
401. |